Winter Wonderland
by VergofTowels
Summary: A blizzard traps the team in their base and leads to the snowball fight of the ages.  Unfortunately, Arthur's suffering from a monster cold at the time...  Eames/Arthur


Just a bit of shameless schmoop for you. :) Written for a prompt on the kink meme.

Disclaimer: I do not own Inception!

* * *

"I want you to put this somewhere where you won't lose it," Arthur said sternly, holding out a sheaf of papers. In the low light from the computers, they could have been anything, though Arthur's face said that they were important. "Eames. Are you listening?"

"What?" The forger in question started a little and blinked, sitting up in his chair. "Yes, of course." He took the stack, dropping it onto his desk with nonchalance. He rubbed his eyes. It was very late, or very early, and he was not quite awake. They had been working since eight yesterday morning. "Thank you, pet."

"Don't call me that," Arthur snapped, like he always did, but he was tired, too, and it lost some of its intended vehemence. "I mean it; put that somewhere safe."

"Yes, because I was going to shove it in with the takeout menus," Eames drawled. "I didn't get to be the world's best leaving papers around, Arthur."

Arthur sighed. "Just… Just do something with them, all right? I don't have time for this." He turned and headed back to his own desk, where his laptop was still open and glowing. Eames could see Arthur's (predictably) boring screensaver of pipes flashing bits of color into the darkness.

"Fine, yes," Eames said to no one, and he slid the papers into a folder of equally important documents. Then he decided that, if he was going to continue working, he was going to need coffee, or at least something hot to drink. It was cool, almost cold, in the house they were using as a base for this job, and he was beginning to get uncomfortable. He stood up. He was almost out of the room when, from the direction of Arthur's desk, he heard a small, stifled cough. He paused.

"Coffee, darling?" he asked softly, his voice floating in the space.

After a moment more of typing, Arthur said "Yeah, thanks." Eames thought he could hear Arthur sniffling a little.

"Righto." Eames walked out of the bare study, where his and Arthur's old desks had been placed earlier that week, and down the hall to the kitchen. Inside, with the light still on, was Yusuf, who had commandeered the counter for his small army of glassware. He was busy distilling another mixture of sedative when Eames came in, but he looked up nonetheless.

"Hello."

"Hey," replied Eames. "'S there coffee in here? Or tea?" He went over to one of the cabinets and started rummaging.

Yusuf nodded. "I think Cobb keeps some here. I mean, we've got truckloads of food. Seems odd he'd forget something so vital."

"Right. Ah, here it is." Eames lifted a package of coffee out of the cabinet. Then his eyes fell on something even better and he grinned. "Hot chocolate! It's the good kind, too." He took it from the shelf. "Want some, Yusuf?"

"No thanks," said the chemist, who returned to fiddling with his beakers. "I'm turning in in a few and I don't need any more caffeine in my system."

"Suit yourself." Eames made one cup of coffee and one cup of cocoa and took them back with him. He stopped by Arthur's desk first. "Darling," he said, and when Arthur glanced up he smiled. "I've got Italian roast here, and a mug of Swiss chocolate. Which would you like?"

Arthur covered another short cough, a brief frown flitting across his features, and squinted up at him through the dark. "Ah… Whichever you don't," he finally sighed.

Eames gave him the chocolate. It was more relaxing. "You should go to bed, darling," he remarked, once he had sat down again. "The internet will still be there when you get up." He sipped his coffee, letting the taste of it roll across his tongue. "Come on, now. My room's right to the left of the stairs, there."

"Thank you, but I have my own bed, Mr. Eames," snapped Arthur with such hostility that Eames was surprised to see him actually rising and collecting his things. He closed his laptop last, finally coming to the conclusion that it would safe enough if he left it in the desk drawer.

"Good night," Eames called a trifle hopefully as Arthur walked by.

Arthur probably didn't intend for Eames to hear his soft reply.

-aaa-

"It's so white!" Ariadne crowed, leaning over the kitchen table to peer through the window. Snow obscured most of the view of mountains they had grown used to seeing every day over meals. All that was visible were a few ice-covered trees and the flat, gray sky. "It must have snowed pretty hard last night."

"Astute observation," murmured Eames into his tea. He had been woken up by the girl's cheerful cries not too long ago and was currently sitting at the table in a pair of sweatpants and last night's shirt. He covered a yawn absently and looked around in vain hope for something resembling a newspaper.

"This presents us with something of a problem," Cobb announced, appearing in the doorway. He looked serious, reminding Eames of how he used to ride them before the Fischer job. The image was kind of ruined by the way Cobb was still tugging down an old blue sweater and pulling a carton of eggs from the fridge. "Communications are down and there's no telling when we'll be able to get out of here." He thought about this for a moment and then shook his head. "Who wants scrambled?"

"Me!" chorused Ariadne and Yusuf.

"I prefer sunny-side up," Eames said, settling for an old edition of Cosmopolitan, wedged on the window seat next to a dusty cookbook and a basket of curling coupons. "Lord, this place is in the middle of nowhere. Who clips coupons in the middle of nowhere?"

"You know what we should do?" Ariadne gasped when she was halfway through a plate of remarkably tasty-looking eggs. She turned to Yusuf with a huge grin on her face. "We should have a snowball fight!"

"Out of the question!" Cobb interjected, stirring the eggs in the non-stick pan he'd dredged up from somewhere in the house. "I am not letting you outside when we're such an easy target."

"Oh come on!" Ari's eyes were huge and pleading. "You said yourself that no one can reach us, short of a helicopter, and we're not wanted in this country, and we'd be able to hear a copter coming, and we've got an arsenal, and besides! You're just afraid you'll lose!" She sulked.

"What?" said Cobb, looking gobsmacked. "Me? Lose? To a brilliant-but-tiny college student and Yusuf?"

"Hey!" put in the chemist as Eames snorted tea.

"So give us Arthur," chirped Ariadne, perking up. "You and Eames versus the three of us. That's even."

"I'd agree to that," Eames hummed, wiping tea off his chin. "Give me an hour to prepare, and you will wish you'd never started this."

"I haven't said yes." Cobb had his back to them as he slipped his eggs onto a plate but he sounded like he was cracking. Ariadne held her breath. "Arthur, tell them why this is such a bad idea."

There was no reply. Cobb turned, puzzled.

"He likes to sleep in," Eames supplied. They got to rest so infrequently that he wasn't surprised Cobb had forgotten it. Still, the blizzard was an unexpected turn of events; by all rights, Arthur should have been up bright and early. Maybe he'd gone back to sleep? Eames kept his thoughts to himself and turned another page in his magazine. "We probably won't see him until noon."

-aaa-

It was, in fact, closer to 1:30 when Arthur descended from his room, dressed casually in wool slacks and a black turtleneck. His hair was combed but unlacquered, falling across his forehead and sticking up a bit in soft tufts in the back. Despite how long he'd slept, there were faint gray smudges under his eyes. His nose was pink.

"Good morning, love," said Eames, glancing over the rims of his reading glasses and setting aside his laptop. "Sleep well?"

"Well enough," replied Arthur blandly, his voice rough. He cleared his throat. "Why didn't you wake me?"

Eames shrugged. "You needed the sleep."

There was a happy squeal from the kitchen door. "Arthur! Good, you're up." Ariadne came in, excited, stopping just short of throwing her arms around him. "I'd like you to come look over our plans, if that's all right. Yusuf and I came up with a few ideas, but we want to hear your opinion."

Arthur blinked. "Huh?"

"You're on their team for the snowball fight," Eames explained.

"…Snowball fight?" Arthur put a hand to his temple. "You do realize just what our profession is, right? It's not exactly safe to be-"

"Arthur, good morning," said Cobb, coming up from behind Ariadne. "It's imperative that we start building the forts soon, or we won't have enough daylight left for a decisive victory."

"Cobb!" Arthur stared openly. He turned to Eames. "Is everyone in favor of this?"

"Apparently." Eames smiled wolfishly.

"Well, I don't think it's safe," Arthur said, slipping a hand into his pocket to check his totem. To his great unhappiness, it remained normal. "What if Diedrich's men came after us? This place may be defensible, but we only have five people and this is-"

"The mountain is snow-locked!" Ariadne cried triumphantly, apparently absolutely delighted at the prospect of being trapped for however long it took. "Please?

"…Redrum," Arthur muttered, and walked past them into the kitchen, automatically drawn to the coffee machine.

"Don't be so pessimistic," Yusuf said, frowning at him. He was sitting at the kitchen table, a pile of blueprints detailing a _snow fort_ spread out before him. It looked complicated. Arthur sighed heavily.

"If you really don't want to, we can mix up the teams," Eames suggested. "Ari and I versus Cobb and Yusuf. That ought to be pretty even." He paused. "Of course, then we'll never know if Arthur can beat me at snowball fighting."

"Oh. No," declared Arthur. "I am not rising to your stupid bait." He sipped his coffee. "My common sense is stronger than your idiocy."

"Oh really?"

-aaa-

"This is so stupid," Arthur spat out between chattering teeth, crouched behind a wall of snow. He had a stack of snowballs next to him, though he wouldn't attest to their good quality. His hands had been shaking when he'd made them. From the ground beside him, his radio squawked. He picked it up and, after a few tries, managed to get the button.

"Yeah?"

"Are you in position, over?" Ariadne was still so happy, even after they'd been outside for an hour. Arthur resisted the urge to growl at her.

"Yes, I think so." He held the radio away as he coughed.

"Excellent. Then, on my mark, initiate Alpha Strike, over."

"What's the signal?" Arthur asked, resigned.

"I'm going to throw my hat, over and out."

Arthur picked up a snowball, rolling it between his gloved palms. He really didn't want to be outside right now. He had been all right earlier that day, when they had been constructing the forts; he'd just been a little tired, a little sore. Now his head was pounding, he could hardly swallow from the pain in his throat, and he'd begun to cough. He thought his nose had started to run, too.

He sniffed, but didn't succeed in moving any of the congestion currently making it difficult for him to focus. He considered calling Ariadne and bowing out before the battle got properly started – not out of cowardice, of course, but simply because he really did feel like shit – but then he caught sight of a pink woolen hat flying up into the sky and he was turning and running, as they'd planned, into the trees. He heard Ariadne let out a whoop of pure joy before the air was filled with flying snow, ice, and even a few pinecones.

"Shit," he mumbled, sniffing again as he ducked further under cover. Though he could hardly feel his feet in the chill, he managed not to fall as he scrambled through the underbrush. The snow lay less thickly on the ground here, so it was a perfect way over to Cobb and Eames's fort. Somewhere over on the right side of the yard Yusuf was doing the same thing, creeping up for ambush while Ariadne distracted the enemy. The chemist was probably enjoying it, too, the bastard.

Suddenly there was the crack of a branch somewhere ahead of him. Arthur froze on instinct, scanning the environment with watering eyes and trying not to give away his position. His jacket was white, which allowed him to blend easily with the snow. Here, he stuck out against the stark tree trunks, a target. He crouched uncomfortably, trying to minimize his silhouette. He began, silently, to form a snowball.

"Darling, is that you?" Of course it would be Eames ahead of him and not some friendly deer. Arthur sighed and didn't reply. "Arthur?"

Eames stepped into view from behind a stand of pines, dressed in winter camouflage of whites, grays, and tans. Arthur had no idea how the man could have something like that; the house had not been stocked with military supplies. Then again, Eames was also carrying something that looked very much like a snowball-crossbow. It was loaded and Eames was using it to peer around trees and into the dark spaces under snow-laden pine boughs. He ended up standing about forty feet from Arthur, with the crossbow pointed right at him. "Hello, sweetheart."

"Don't call me that," snapped Arthur, straightening, aware that he could attempt to hide no longer. His legs ached in the dull way of sickness and he tried not to shiver too obviously.

"As you wish," Eames said cheekily, grinning. "What do you have there?"

Arthur looked down at his hands. "It's a snowball," he declared. The 'obviously' was left unsaid. He sniffed heavily.

"That's a pretty pathetic snowball." Eames laughed and hefted his crossbow. "Want to find out what a real snowball fight is like?"

"Eames, no-" Arthur began, but it was too late; the Brit had already pulled the trigger.

Time seemed to slow as the snowball came rocketing toward him, Arthur's perception of its perfectly spherical shape distending with speed. All sound disappeared; no longer were Ariadne and Cobb's shouts breaking up the silence of the woods. The last thing Arthur saw was Eames's slyly smirking face before the snowball hit him right between the eyes, sending him flying backward in a shower of icy cold shrapnel.

-aaa-

Arthur woke up with a gasp, confused and alarmed at the sudden shock. He tried to sit up, but he found it hard to move. Something was trapping him down. Even his arms were pinned tight. He swore.

"Arthur, darling, calm down!"

There was a warm weight on his shoulder and then the icy feeling was gone from his face. Arthur stilled and blinked hazily upward. Eames was looking down at him with a concerned and faintly panicked look on his face. In his left hand was a green washcloth, limp with water and likely the source of the cold. Eames's other hand was holding Arthur down with a gentle firmness.

"Are you all right?" Eames seemed to relax a little now that Arthur wasn't flailing around. "I didn't mean to wake you. Sorry. I guess it _was_ a bit too chilly after all." He dropped the damp cloth into a bowl of water on the coffee table and reached over to smooth Arthur's bangs back from his face. Arthur tried half-heartedly to stop him, but his arms were still tangled in the blanket.

"Eames," he croaked. "What happened?" He tried to clear his throat but it was too painful. "Where's everyone else?"

Eames shifted back a little and Arthur realized that he was lying on the couch in the living room of the house, Eames sitting on the edge beside his legs. The windows were still all over white and there was no sign of anyone else. A plate on the table beside the water bowl contained a half-eaten piece of rye toast and smudges of jam. Arthur vaguely remembered eating toast earlier that afternoon.

"Cobb and the others are still outside," Eames said, absently patting Arthur's knee. The point man doubted Eames had any idea he was doing it. "Ariadne wanted to make snowmen. Remember we didn't end up building the forts because you said you didn't feel well?"

"Um. Yes," said Arthur, who did, vaguely, recall something of the sort. "Do I have a fever?" He tugged one arm out of its fleecy embrace in time to catch a harsh sneeze, weakly turning his face toward the back of the couch.

"You do," Eames confirmed, handing Arthur a tissue. "38.9. You're pretty darn sick." He shook his head. "It was probably coming for a while. You've been down since the Sykes job."

Arthur blinked, surprised that Eames had noticed. He _had_ actually been quite tired after that almost-debacle, but he thought he'd been hiding it fairly well. Then again, Eames was a masterfully observant man. It was in his job description. "You're right…" He sighed, and then sneezed again, accepting another tissue and embarrassedly letting Eames take the other one and throw it away in the trashcan by the foot of the couch.

"Bless you. Are you ready for the washcloth, or should I ditch it altogether? You can't take any more medicine yet, so I thought it might help…" Eames looked so… vulnerable. Quite out of his element. Arthur found himself smiling. This Eames was nothing like the sly Eames in his dream.

"Go ahead." He shivered slightly as the cloth met his heated skin, but eventually the tension started to leak away. "Why are you doing this?" he asked sleepily as Eames moved the cloth slowly across his face and onto his neck. "I'm sure there are better things to do than look after me."

"Actually," said Eames, his full lips quirking into a tender smile that Arthur had never seen before, "I don't think there are. But if you're so concerned, then look: I have my laptop right here. While you were asleep, I was reading the layouts you sent me. So it's not totally wasted time, hm?"

"I suppose not," Arthur mumbled. His eyes slipped closed and he could feel sleep tugging at him, only to find himself coming awake quickly at an unfamiliar sensation. Eames was kissing his cheek, a light brush of lips against skin that hardly counted at all, but…

"Sweet dreams, Arthur," Eames said, a bit of humor back in his voice. "I'll come check on you again in a few hours." He stood up, tucking his computer under his arm, and walked into the kitchen. It was only a few seconds later that Arthur heard Ariadne unlock the back door and stumble inside, laughing and breathless with cold. Eames remarked upon her very snowy state with a chuckle and started clinking around with the dishes, probably intending to start dinner.

Arthur _considered _getting up. Cobb and Yusuf had also returned and were rattling about putting away their boots and things, arguing about the winner, apparently, of their snow-sculpture contest. The kitchen was the hub of activity in the house and he was missing out on it. Then Ariadne came in to see him and tell him about her army of three-foot-deep snow angles and how Cobb had crafted Godzilla out of a twenty-foot snow bank. They ate in the living room, too, and Arthur had to say he couldn't complain. Even when Eames insisted on helping him to bed that night, one arm securely around Arthur's waist.

-aaa-

"It's your own fault," he said, adopting the lofty tone he always used when he was speaking to people he didn't particularly like and Eames. It was the latter, this time. "I didn't ask you to do it."

"I know that, _darling_," Eames rasped, dabbing at his nose with a wilting handkerchief. He glared balefully at the point man. "You'll notice I haven't complained once." He sniffed, miserable, and went back to staring out the plane window. They'd completed the job without trouble; once Arthur had recovered it had been a simple in-and-out affair. Now they were leaving the mountain house alone but for a few dozen happy snow-creatures in the back yard.

Arthur sighed and lifted a hand to Eames neck, massaging gently. "Go to sleep, Mr. Eames. You'll feel better."

He even volunteered his shoulder as a pillow.

* * *

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